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Colette Bryce is a critically acclaimed poet from Derry, currently based in the North East of England. She has published three collections with Picador: The Heel of Bernadette (2000), The Full Indian Rope Trick (2004) and Self-Portrait in the Dark (2008), and has received several...

Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast and lived there until 1975 when he moved to Scotland. He now lives in Glasgow and is a member of Aosdana in Ireland. He has written five collections of short stories, four novels and versions of his fiction for other media – radio...

William Crawley is a journalist and broadcaster with the BBC, presenting TV and radio programmes on subjects as varied as news and politics, arts and science, religion and ethics. He presents Sunday Sequence, The Book Programme and Talk Back on Radio Ulster; The Sunday Programme...

Michael Longley is a leading figure in contemporary Irish poetry. He has published nine poetry collections, among them Gorse Fires (1991), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award, and The Weather in Japan (2000) which won the Hawthorn Prize, the T S Eliot Prize and the Irish Times...

Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone in 1975 and educated at Cookstown High School and Cambridge University. He worked as a litigator for several years before leaving to write full-time. He has published three poetry collections, To a Fault (2005), On Purpose (2007), and Go...

Eugene Kielt is a native of Magherafelt. He is a Blue Badge-trained guide who specializes in bespoke tours of Heaney Country. He and Gerardine run Laurel Villa, an award-winning guesthouse which is also the venue for the festival. Its Seamus Heaney Exhibition, poetry-themed...

Michael McGuinness was born in Limavady in 1955. He attended Art College in Coventry and Belfast before finishing his studies at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He has lectured in Dublin, Belfast and at the Tate Gallery. Michael has established himself as one of the...

Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown. She started writing poetry at an early age and was the youngest ever winner of The Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1990. She has produced four collections: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2002), The State of the...

Gillian Clarke, the National Poet of Wales, was born in Cardiff in 1937. Since her first collection Snow on the Mountain came out in 1971 she has emerged as a central figure in contemporary Welsh poetry. Her sensitive and insightful poems have achieved widespread critical and...